How ridiculous is it that I'm gonna have to disambiguate this guy as Prime Prime. Well, at least there's no PrimePrimal Prime yet.

I didn't go to San Diego Comic-Con! But Emerald Beacon did. He's a guy who's done some artwork for Fun Publications and he's the mastermind behind those Bat-Con t-shirts. I have one! I wore it to the Dark of the Moon premiere. It's a swank shirt. And since he's a swank guy, he picked me up some SDCC swag. Among them was this FIRST EDITION MATRIX OF LEADERSHIP OPTIMUS PRIME. I think that's its name, anyway.

It's the first Transformers Prime toy, unless you want to count the War for Cybertron stuff. And it's gonna be the only Transformers Prime stuff until November or December, so even though I'm gonna be owning this toy again when I get the "Entertainment Pack" that comes with the three PVC human kids, it's worth it to me to have this guy five months early.

Plus, dude, his packaging. He comes inside a Matrix, which you can wear, which comes inside a box that looks like Optimus Prime's chest, sealed with a magnet. And you can remove the toy no problem from the Matrix without wrecking it. You just pop the plastic part, sort through some layers, and voila. Removeable, returnable Optimus Prime toy. So when my next convention comes along (Wizard World Chicago, is it?) I can put him back in and wear him around like a dork. You know, versus shilling my webcomic at a table like a dork.

The toy is more complicated than I was expecting. I'm not sure why I was expecting simpler. It's not, like, insanely complicated, it's just more complicated than I thought it looked, apparently. The thing explodes to transform from one mode to another. And I'm increasingly used to Optimus Prime toys having fake robot mode windshields, but it feels a little crazier to have his fake robot mode windshield to fold up and cover his real truck windshield. That feels like a whole new level of absurdity. But I understand why. His robot mode windows don't actually look like his truck mode windows, so whatcha gonna do. Damn those character designers.

Another thing that weirds me out are his shoulders. They look for all the world like they're supposed to become the truck's air foil, and it's kind of frustrating that they don't. In both this Deluxe Class toy and the upcoming Voyager Class toy, the air foil instead becomes the heels. Again, I understand why, what with the placement of the parts in each mode and the designed hinging in the front of the shins, but it rankles my brain a little.

In conclusion, this guy comes with a wearable Matrix, within which is a toy which won't be out for several months. How much either of those two details tickle you should determine how dedicated you are to hunting him down.